Posts Tagged ‘Rachel’

Back to “HaTanakh Hayah BeEmet” (התנ”ך היה באמת, דר. ליאורה רביד 2009) which I have commented on several times (here, here and here) over the last couple of weeks. This time Liora Ravid makes the assertion that the term “ויחר אף” means particularly violent anger – which it may but also may not, as I will show.

She is discussing the birth of Ya’akov’s children and the names given them by their mothers. This she uses to continue to portray Ya’akov in a far more negative light than I believe he deserves as a violent man and a fraudster. As for the fraudster, I do think can be said of him. His name says as much, he deceived his father and got his uppance Midah keNeged Midah from Lavan with Leah and Lavan even explains himself on this point. He then successfully uses his skills against Lavan for the flocks.

However I don’t see him as a violent man. She takes the names of Leah’s first children (Reuven and Shim’on) to tell a story of domestic violence and the term “sanuah” to mean literally hated as in the modern usage. Joshua Berman maintains in his book that LeEhov in Tanakh means more in terms of faithfulness and preferentialness than love and gives examples both from Tanakh and outside of the verb meaning to be faithful to a covernant. In contrast he maintains that LiSnoh means to be unfaithful and not give special consideration complete with examples. Thus he explains for example Deut 11.1 or 7:13 or 10:13 or more pointedly for us 21:15 that is talking about a man with two wives; one “loved” and the other “hated”. This becomes one given preferential status over the other.

Liora Ravid goes further to suggest that when Leah says “ראה ה’ בעניי” she is aluding to rape as in what Shekhem will later do to Dinah “ויעניה”. Rather tenuous seeing as marital rape was not a crime, and other uses of the word in Gen 31:42 (Ya’akov describes his hard life looking after the sheep to Lavan) or 41:52 (Yosef calls his son Efrayim “כי הפרני אלוהים בארץ עניי”) which both just mean miserableness.

And so we get to Gen 30:2 where Ya’akov remonstrates with the childless Rahel “ויחר אף יעקב ברחל”. Ravid asserts that this term is otherwise reserved for God’s destructive wrath like when he wants to wipe out the people altogether. It is true that it can, but it also can mean just plain annoyance. It can mean the whole spectrum of annoyance and anger. Here are the examples that prove my point:

I agree, these are my only examples out of 28 instances where most are of the “God was really angry and smote them” type, but that’s what tends to happen when the Tanakh explains that God was angry. However it does show that the term”ויחר אף” does not need to mean particularly violent anger. It can just mean regular anger.

Come to think of it how does the Tanakh say “anger” in other words than”ויחר אף”? Maybe just that people/God who are angry at all in the Tanakh are generally those who are in a position and diposition to cause a great deal of damage? Any suggestions?

I now know why I am still reading Liora Ravid’s book “HaTanakh Hayah BeEmet” (התנ”ך היה באמת). See my previous posts about her book here and here. She keeps making the most preposterous mistakes and outrageous claims but in order to check that I am in fact correct she is sending me back to the texts and making me think about why she is wrong.

The latest problem is chapter 10. All of it. This chapter explains the chronology of Jacob’s sojourn with his uncle Lavan in Haran. Her thesis goes like this. The text says that Ya’akov worked for seven years fo Rahel, got Leah, worked another seven for Rahel, this time got Rahel. Only then did Leah start giving birth. In the next six years 11 children were born. She has two problems with this. Firstly the ages of the Rahel and Leah where she assumes they were aged 8 and 9 at the start of the story and would therefore have been aged 24 and 25 when they started giving birth – which in those days was very late. Secondly physically fitting so many births into such a short time would be impossible and alternatively if you extend the period of time of the births they get way to old to have children. Therefore she cuts the amount of time that Ya’akov worked for each of them and gets to something more reasonable. She then claims that 7 being a magical important number doesn’t need to be understood literally.

All very good, only her analysis is based on a misreading (did she even read it?) of the text.

The story goes thus. Gen 29:18-22 describe how Ya’akov works seven years for Rahel, verses 23-26 tell of Lavan’s deception by switching Rahel for Leah, Ya’akov’s indignation and Lavan’s mild amusement. Verse 27 then says this:

27 Fulfil the week of this one, and we will give you the other also for the work that you do for me for another seven years. 28 And Ya’akov did so, and fulfilled her week; and he (Lavan) gave him (Ya’akov) Rahel his daughter as a wife. 29 And Lavan gave to Rahel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her handmaid. 30 And he (Ya’akov) alsocame to Rahel, and he loved Rahel more than Leah, and served with him another seven years.

Quite clear. After the first seven years he gets Leah, then seven days later Rahel, then he works another seven years.

The next problem is what happens after the end of the 14 years. In Gen 31:41 Ya’akov says “These twenty years have I been in thy house: I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock and you changed my wages ten times”. That’s OK, only it says in 30:25 that after Yosef was born Ya’akov went to Lavan and requested a wage for continuing to work for him. The implication is that this is where the second seven years ended and the further six started.

What’s the problem? Well the first problem is that Ravid ignores this and assumes that the text is saying that all the children were born in that six years (according to her misunderstanding, he only got Rahel at the end of the 14th year and only then did Leah start giving birth). She says this is impossible.

The other problem is that if we go according to the correct reading we are still only left with seven years for all these children to be born. This is not impossible as the chart on the right shows (click it to enlarge) but not easy. The chart is based on the text giving the order of births as presented. I am assuming here (a very unlikely) 9 months only between births for each mother. I will also assume that there is no necessary connection between birtyhs by different mothers. Thus when Rahel saw that Leah was giving birth and she wasn’t it doesn’t necessarily mean that this was after the birth of Yehudah, only that Dan was born after Yehudah. This is not enitirely necessary as it is possible that the Torah just wants to finish with one story (Leah’s births) before it starts then next, but let’s leave it as it is. In any case we need a large gap between Yehudah and Yissakhar as “Leah saw she ahd stopped giving birth” before she gave Zilpah to her husband and she had two children before Yissakhar.

In any case, the whole scenario is still rather tenuous.

The key to the door that will give us our way out would be the statement by Ya’akov that I quoted above that Lavan switched his wages ten times. The text does not list these ten times, so maybe the conversation between Ya’akov and Lavan starting at 30:25 was not necessarily at the fourteenth year.

What I am suggesting is that during his long stay in Haran, Ya’akov had become one of Lavan’s household and that after completing his 14 years, he was working for the family not for any specific wage. When he wants to leave he comes to request a severance grant. This is in my opinion supported by the text (Gen 30:25-35):

Nowhere is it suggested that he will work for six years, but rather that he will get a wage for work already done. Ya’akov then spends a season or two “engineering” spotted sheep and then gets out. This assumption will allow us to extend the period of time where the children are being born.

The new chart on the right shows this new timeline. Here I am asuming 1.5 years between births. I am also assuming that Leah seeing she wasn’t giving birth means she waited a year before giving Zilpah. The only liberty I am taking is to disregard the order that Dinah was born in. My assumption is that it is not important to the teller only that she was Leah’s last child, not that she was necessarily born before Yosef. If we insist on her being born before Yosef, then we can do that as well.

In my new timeline Ya’akov has two years to do his spotted sheep stuff and amass his herd. If we make the births closer then we can give him more time for that, but let’s leave it like that.

Anyway in conclusion what I can say is that the chronology here is a bit tight whichever way you go. Tzarikh Iyun as they say. I can also say that I have confirmed once more that Liora Ravid doesn’t know her Tanakh.